2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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MFTL
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/MFTL/ [abbreviation: My Favorite Toy Language ] 1. adj. Describes a talk on
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a programming language design that is heavy on the syntax (with lots of
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BNF), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g., type systems), but rarely,
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if ever, has any content (see content-free ). More broadly applied to talks
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even when the topic is not a programming language in which the subject
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matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of
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any conceptual content. Well, it was a typical MFTL talk. 2. n. Describes a
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language about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of
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proselytic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by
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those outside the originating group. He cornered me about type resolution in
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his MFTL. The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is
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usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from
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contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself.
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Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is Has it been used for
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anything besides its own compiler? On the other hand, a (compiled) language
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that cannot even be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt. (The
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qualification has become necessary because of the increasing popularity of
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interpreted languages like Perl and Python. ) See break-even point. (On a
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related note, Doug McIlroy once proposed a test of the generality and
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utility of a language and the operating system under which it is compiled:
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Is the output of a FORTRAN program acceptable as input to the FORTRAN
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compiler? In other words, can you write programs that write programs? (See
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toolsmith. ) Alarming numbers of (language, OS) pairs fail this test,
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particularly when the language is FORTRAN; aficionados are quick to point
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out that Unix (even using FORTRAN) passes it handily. That the test could
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ever be failed is only surprising to those who have had the good fortune to
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have worked only under modern systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed
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file types.
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